


Crime and Punishment

by manic_intent



Category: Black Panther (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fix-It of Sorts, Light Dom/sub, M/M, Post-Canon, That Fix-it post-canon AU where Erik lives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-03
Updated: 2018-04-03
Packaged: 2019-04-17 21:01:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,841
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14197623
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/manic_intent/pseuds/manic_intent
Summary: They don’t kill each other at the end. Erik was better with his hands, T’Challa better with his claws. That was the problem. They brawled in the dark until the war above them resolved itself, and then what were they meant to do? Erik had started it, the ceasefire. He hadn’t meant to. He’d laughed, because all the bitterness and hatred and frustration in him had boiled to a point where there was nothing left to do but laugh.“Now what?” Erik asked, days after and not for the first time. They were miles from Wakanda, walking.





	Crime and Punishment

**Author's Note:**

> A couple of friends started up a Black Panther kink meme here: blackpantherkink.dreamwidth.org and I wanted to write something for it. Some disclaimers:  
> 1\. I don’t have a good ear for colloquial speech in general, nor do I really like to write it into my fic: visually I find it a bit distracting. Because I'm bad at it. ^^;;  
> 2\. I’m 110% not a #KillmongerWasRight kind of person. 
> 
> Prompt from the kink meme: I just want to see T'Challa as the epitome of calm, implacable patience as he takes Erik apart, and Erik enjoying it far more than he'd ever admit outside of the bedroom.

They don’t kill each other at the end. Erik was better with his hands, T’Challa better with his claws. That was the problem. They brawled in the dark until the war above them resolved itself, and then what were they meant to do? Erik had started it, the ceasefire. He hadn’t meant to. He’d laughed, because all the bitterness and hatred and frustration in him had boiled to a point where there was nothing left to do but laugh. 

“Now what?” Erik asked, days after and not for the first time. They were miles from Wakanda, walking. 

Instead of ignoring him, or giving him a non-answer, T’Challa stared. The King of Wakanda was lean and tall. Handsome, if you liked that kinda thing. He was a notch taller than Erik, something that Erik found nearly as annoying as T’Challa’s inborn grace, the wry curl to his lush mouth, the infuriating gentleness in his eyes.

“Wakanda cannot have two kings,” T’Challa said, after a pause. 

“So let’s throw down. Again. Now.” 

T’Challa shook his head. He’d surrendered his necklace to Queen Ramonda when Erik had. Neither of them had claws now, which should’ve made killing T’Challa easy. Erik told himself he was just biding his time. “We’re both still blessed by Bast.” 

“We both ate some fancy herb and tripped out, yeah.”

“One of us has to yield to the other. But if we come to blows, there’d be civil war. Again. We’ve both wronged Wakanda. Made decisions that ended in misery and the death of our people. So we both have to suffer the consequences.”

“Exile,” Erik said, skeptical. “For a year and a bit.”

“A month for every person who died from our mistakes.” 

“But if I kill you I get to go back and sit my ass back down on the throne?” 

T’Challa shrugged. “If you can.” 

“You people don’t have prisons?” 

“We do. For smaller crimes. And not in the way that you think. The degree of civilisation in a society can be judged by its prisons.”

“By _entering_ its prisons,” Erik said. He’d read Dostoevsky in MIT. 

T’Challa inclined his head. “We don’t have prisons for larger transgressions. We don’t have the death penalty. We have exile.” 

“So what, if you do something real bad, you take a year’s holiday and come back and all’s forgiven? That’s fucking it?” 

T’Challa stared at him with surprise. “I thought that you of all people would understand how painful exile can be. And we don’t believe in punitive measures. We believe in teachable moments.” 

Erik spat to the side. “So what am I supposed to be learning? That white, black, yellow, brown, blue or whatever, fancy-ass people don’t give a real damn about their poorer brothers? I knows that and then some.” 

“It’s up to you what lesson you wish to learn. As long as you keep an open mind.” T’Challa looked as though he wanted to say more, but he bit the words down with visible effort. 

“Say it. You wanna say it or just choke on it?” 

“You can’t save the oppressed people of the world by becoming an oppressor,” T’Challa said, after a long moment. “All you’d be doing is painting a target on our backs. Ours, and anyone who shares our skin colour. From misery like that there is no justice. No peace. And without peace, no progress.” 

Erik sneered. “I stepped over a hell of a lot of bodies to get to the throne. Ain’t just my brothers and sisters of colour. Not just my enemies. I’m not looking for philosophy. Just justice.” 

“And that’s something to be proud of?” T’Challa shot back. “To kill so many people? To strangle an old woman? To—”

“I killed my girlfriend as well. Her name was Linda. Smart as a whip. Good with a gun. Think she was waiting for me to get on a knee, this past year. Name her Queen of everything.” 

T’Challa recoiled. “You killed her?” 

“Shot her. She was in the way.” 

“You’re…” T’Challa swallowed the words again, going stiff. Anger fought disgust on his face and neither won. He looked up at the sky. 

“Wanna say it? I know you’ve said it. Call me a monster to my face. I’ve heard it before. I know you’re thinking it.” 

“I’m sorry. That things worked out this way.” T’Challa was annoyingly poised again. Gentle. Erik’s fists itched. 

“So what are you here to learn?” 

“Forgiveness. With you as the teacher.” 

“Forgiveness?” Erik’s lip curled. “I’m not looking for any of that shit.” 

“Your forgiveness,” T’Challa corrected. 

Erik raised his eyebrows. “You’re fucking with me.”

“No. I want to understand what drove you to this point. Why you thought force was the only option. Whether mere revenge was your main motivator or conquest.”

“‘Mere’, huh?”

“Whether you are as selfish as you seem,” T’Challa said, and met Erik’s eyes with his infuriating unbroken calm. 

“And what do you think?”

“There’s a proverb in this part of the world. A boy, rejected by the village, would burn it down to feel its warmth.” 

“Sounds ‘bout right.” 

T’Challa stared at him keenly. “Interesting that it’s indeed usually a boy who pulls the trigger.”

#

They bought a battered old wreck of a car at the first village they happened on, and traded it up at the next town. Thankfully, Erik had been carrying cash in the gear he’d worn to Wakanda, gear that they’d returned when they booted Erik out. “Shouldn’t you be paying?” Erik asked, as they pulled out of the town in the old jeep.

T’Challa had been studying the sun-broken fields, the crops swallowed in dust. “If I could use my finances, this wouldn’t be penance.” 

“So you really got nothing but the clothes on your back.” 

“Humility is a necessary part of learning a lesson.” 

Erik snorted. “I’m gonna be running a tab here. Keeping track.”

T’Challa glanced at him. “You didn’t have to buy supplies for the both of us.” 

“Who said I bought any for you?” Erik shot back, annoyed. That was right. He’d bought food, water, clothes for two in the town’s huddled little market. Hadn’t really even thought about it. 

“My mistake,” T’Challa said. Erik grit his teeth, briefly tempted to kick T’Challa out of the car. 

“You see that town we went through?” Erik asked instead. 

“Yes?”

“Notice anything?” 

T’Challa actually looked over his shoulder. “Notice what?”

“The line of women walking in from the east. Buckets and bottles on their shoulders. You know they walk miles out to the only source of clean water in these parts? You know there ain’t no doctors in this part of Canaan until you get to the city?”

T’Challa said nothing for a while, twisting to watch the brown lands that stretched out around them, dotted with wiry plants. “For centuries Wakanda watched foreign powers loot our neighbours and we did nothing. Now we are doubly afraid. Not only that we will be looted in turn, but that our neighbours will look at us and ask, ‘Where were you? Where were you when our lands were stripped into mines, when our children were taken away and auctioned?’”

“Y’all were cowards.”

“Wakanda is bordered by three countries. Canaan, Niganda, Azania. We’ve historically had our… differences with all three, all of which are now desperately poor. As you’ve noticed. Tell me about your grand plan to better their lives.” 

Erik scowled at the road. “Canaan’s ruled by a greedy king who lives in luxury while his people starve. We depose him. Start infrastructure projects.” 

“The local economy is in tatters. The existing infrastructure is over a hundred years old. There’s existing unrest from radicalisation, unrest that will worsen in a war. Crops are failing because of desertification.” 

“Well, how would you do it?” Erik asked, scowling. “Oh, I know. Step aside, close your eyes, y’all see no evil.” 

“Nakia has the right idea, I think. Immerse people in the local communities, work on empowering communities rather than trying to run them from the outside. Fund projects, provide aid, but do it better than everyone. Build outreach centres.” 

Erik sneered. “The world’s too ugly for that hope and change shit. Canaan ain’t all that bad as it is. Civil war sparks up only every few decades or so. Very little tribalism. There’s places we could drive to from here that’s like hell on earth. Child soldiers, mass rapes, epidemics, you name it.” 

“Show me.” 

T’Challa was… “You’re serious.” 

“You think I’m ignorant and I’m spoiled. Show me.” 

“You want me to drive you around so you can do, what, human misery tourism? Fuck that.”

“I’ve told you before,” T’Challa said, quiet and patient. “I want to understand what motivates you. What you want. Or is putting things to the torch all that you know?” 

Erik seethed for a while, as they drove through dust, passing the occasional lorry, stacked high with people. “I fucking hate you,” he said. 

The dust felt scratchy on Erik’s throat, scouring lines over his cheeks. Yet the discomfort was nothing compared to the way his blood felt like it was humming from his rage, the way each breath felt like he was choking on fury. Hate had driven Erik forward for so long that it made even this unlikely outcome feel familiar. 

T’Challa inclined his head. He looked tired. “I know.”

#

The city of Qadesh was ancient, and had been beautiful. Now it sat within the ribs of what had been. Monoliths of crumbling stone bookmarked squat concrete buildings and somber flats webbed with power lines. Erik found a hotel near the open air market that he’d used before, and herded T’Challa into the room they were sharing. “There’s water,” Erik said, “but it won’t be hot. You wanna wash up, best you do it now. Qadesh gets a lot of black outs.”

“What are you going to do?”

“Take a walk.” 

T’Challa looked like he was going to object, but he nodded instead. Erik tossed him the second set of keys and took the stairs. His armour was in the bags and he’d switched out to unassuming clothes in the previous town. Best not to draw notice, even though violence was humming in his throat, loose under his nails. He wanted to fight something, fuck something. Kill something. Erik breathed in the city and it breathed him back. He went to the market and bought a pack of fried plantains, then he wished he hadn’t. 

Too late now. Erik walked as he ate, licking oily fingers. His father had loved plantains. There’d been a small Caribbean grill in Oakland that they went to once a week. Side of jerk chicken, side of plantains. His father laughed once, when Erik had asked, at four, if this was what he’d eaten in Wakanda. It hadn’t been a joyous sound. “I lived in a palace in Wakanda,” N’Jobu had said, wry and distant, “and I pray you’d never have to.” 

“Why not?” Erik had bristled then, even at six years of age. He’d grown up wearing secondhand clothes, being locked at home while his father was out and his mother, missing. That was how he’d found his father’s secrets. Erik knew every bit of that apartment like the back of his hand because he had no choice. 

“Because it’ll change you. Power destroys people. I hope you’d never see that. It’ll rot you from the inside. Make you use people. And if you come to that kind of power when you only have hate to give, well.” 

“Well what?” 

_Well what?_ Erik mouthed now. He walked until he came to the muddy river that bisected Qadesh and sat on a concrete bench. Boats were plying the water, hawking colourful carpets, ceramic pots, snacks. He ignored them all, eating. Resentment burned in his gut. It would be easy to head back. Break T’Challa’s neck in his sleep, drive back to Wakanda with the spoils. Return to power with hate to give. 

Erik cursed under his breath. “This what you want, old man?” Erik muttered. “Why’d you even fucking leave in the first place? When you were a fucking prince?” 

A boat laden with rugs, angling closer, hastily poled away. Erik ignored it. He ate the rest of his plantains and binned the pack. Walked until he found an alley bar, bought a cold beer. Drifted. 

When Erik’s feet took him back towards the hotel it was growing late. He’d taken a circular route back, away from the markets. Qadesh was millions thick with people, and this side of the city was clustered with aging flats. Concrete bunkers, Linda had once called them. Tiny apartments, narrow windows. Built too fast and too cheaply. Poles of drying laundry jutted out of gaps in colourful spikes. 

People laughing. Erik drew closer. In an empty dirt square two sets of water barrels had been set up on different ends. People were playing football with a ball so old that the grooves had been worn smooth. Young men and even a couple of women. And T’Challa, of all people. Erik rubbed his eyes. 

No. Definitely T’Challa, in a plain shirt and trousers. He flicked the ball up with a twist of his feet, nudged it with a knee over a defender, passing it to a girl who couldn’t have been much older than Princess Shuri. She dodged past another defender with a fancy bit of footwork and volleyed the ball at the goal. It was slapped away by the goalkeeper. She yelled an imprecation, laughing, and the goalkeeper made a rude gesture. 

T’Challa turned and froze as he spotted Erik. He said something to the people around him and jogged off the makeshift pitch. A kid on the sidelines was already taking his place. “What are you doing?” Erik asked, once T’Challa was closer.

“Diplomacy,” T’Challa said. He didn’t even look out of breath. Had no one even noticed? “I’ve never been to Qadesh.” 

“What kinda diplomacy? With kids?” 

“Young people are the future of any country. It’s useful to hear them out, to try and understand what they want. Qadesh has a high unemployment rate. Low literacy rate. But the young are eager to make something out of their lives. They’re hungry, in the way Wakandan children often aren’t.” 

“Because they know what it feels like.” Erik had known hunger. The fact that he’d gone from the streets in Oakland to MIT as an orphan was a miracle, in a way. One that had stretched over a lot of hungry days.

T’Challa started to say more, but his stomach growled. He cleared his throat. “There’s a divide—”

“You eaten?” When T’Challa didn’t answer, Erik exhaled, annoyed. “C’mon. I know a place.” 

The yassa shop was really an open-air pocket by the river, communal tables before a kitchen of drums of charcoal and vats of stew. They sat on stools at the corner of a long table with deep bowls of yassa, the skins of quartered chicken pieces burnt golden in a spicy sauce, served with fragrant rice. _Stick to your ribs food_ , N’Jobu would’ve called it. 

“This is really good,” T’Challa said. Hungry as he was, he still ate with an annoying meticulousness, careful and slow. “Thank you.” 

Erik scowled. T’Challa’s gratefulness only irritated him further. “I wanted to eat here. Still as good as I remember.” 

“Why were you in Qadesh?”

“Why else? I was using it as a forward base. Wakanda ain’t too far from here, compared to the other cities. I was in Canaan for a while.” 

Linda had been the one who’d found out about the yassa shop. It had been on TripAdvisor, of all things. The apartment they’d rented was just ten minutes’ walk away. Months he’d spent waking up next to her, tangled in the sheets. He’d left her body in the junkyard where he’d killed her, stuffed in the boot of a car. 

“That’s how you learned about the Border Tribes.” 

“About W’Kabi, yeah.” Erik’s lip curled. “Why ain’t he here with us?” 

“He did no wrong, technically. He followed _a_ king.” 

“Sounds like you ain’t got your house set in real order.”

“No. Nor would I want to. There’s a reason why the Tribal Council is meant to have an equal role in Wakanda's government.”

“Didn’t feel that way to me,” Erik said. The Tribal Council had been fearful, other than General Okoye. Weak. At least T’Challa had backbone. If anything, Erik could respect that. Someday. 

He’d kill T’Challa tonight. Pin him down, smother him, break his neck. Stuff the body in the boot of a car. 

T’Challa finished his portion, got up, and walked over to the kitchen. By the time Erik caught up, T’Challa was solemnly thanking the cooks. All of them were hijabis, their faces seamed by time and work, but they were soon giggling and laughing as T’Challa clasped each person earnestly by their hands. “Some of the best food I’ve ever eaten,” T’Challa told them, in proper, harshly accented Canaanite French. “Thank you. It was a real pleasure.” 

Did they know that they were shaking hands with a king? Perhaps they could guess. T’Challa was branded by the manner of his birth, just as Erik had been branded by his father’s death. T’Challa breathed it, walked it. Wore no crown but it was there, plain as day. The old woman at the grill looked at Erik, then back at T’Challa. “Your friend?” 

T’Challa smiled. “My cousin.” 

“Oh, cousin! How’s your pretty girlfriend? Haven’t seen you two around for a long time,” the old woman told Erik. 

“She didn’t come ‘round this time,” Erik replied in French. He jerked his thumb at T’Challa. “Just here to show my cousin around. Sorry, he hasn’t had yassa before. Think he’s overwhelmed.” 

“No yassa?” The old woman studied T’Challa with a new light.

“Not like this,” T’Challa said.

“You are also American?” she asked, doubtful. “You sound like a Canaanite.”

T’Challa shook his head. “No, no. You’re too kind to say so.” 

“How’d you know I was American?” Erik asked, curious. He’d never spoken to the women, save to order dishes, and he knew his French was properly accented. Not for Canaan maybe, but for this part of Africa.

“You can tell,” the woman said, not unkindly. She smiled broadly at T’Challa, as though they were old friends. “Come back tomorrow, yes? You _have_ to try our ngalakh. We only make it on Thursdays.” 

Back in the hotel, T’Challa said, “Dinner was amazing. Thank you.”

“You can stop saying that now, it’s pissing me off.” Not tonight, then. Not yet. To kill T’Challa now would be too easy, too kind. Erik had a cache of resources hidden in Canaan. Weapons and different currencies. Passports and papers. They could go east. “Shut up and sleep. Long drive tomorrow.”

#

They crossed into Chad late on a Sunday morning. Once it had been a vast freshwater lake, one that the locals had called _chad_. European explorers had therefore called it Lake Chad on their maps, not knowing—or perhaps not caring—that _chad_ meant “lake”.

The rivers that fed into Chad had long dried up. The desert ate the lake. By the last two decades the wetlands had shrunk to a fraction of what it had been. People starved. Then the jackals came, the human ones. When Erik had been stationed out of N’Djamena, working missions around and through Chad, he’d seen people kill each other over pastures. 

“France took over Chad way back,” Erik said, as they looked over the rippled sand, shored up against the distant burned out wreck of a village. “Sent its worst officers here as punishment. Hundreds of thousands of people died from hunger. They forced people to plant cotton in the fertile bits. 

“Fast forward through some wars. In the ‘90s, if you were born here, you had a fifteen per cent chance of dying before your first birthday. Life expectancy was ‘bout thirty-nine years. Government relies on Western support to stay in power. Economy’s collapsed. ISIS in the north. Boko Haram in the south. Al Qaeda to the west.” He looked at T’Challa with contempt. “Tell me how your outreach programs will save these people, your _Majesty_.”

T’Challa got out of the jeep. The sun was growing obnoxiously hot, but he was oblivious to it, his jaw set, his hand clenched tight in the frame of the car. “I know about Chad,” he said, in a small voice.

“Reading about it’s nothing like seeing it up close, yeah? We should head up to the Kafia displacement site. See the camps.” Erik let out a sharp laugh. “What _was_ your plan, exactly? If you’d killed me?” 

“I didn’t want to kill you. I still don’t.” 

Erik leaned his elbows up over the top of the jeep, balanced against the frame. “I think I know how your mind works. You’d have gone to the UN, made a pretty speech about sharing tech. I know you’re guilty over what happened to my dad. To me. You might’ve bought up some buildings in Oakland. Built some outreach centres there.”

T’Challa looked away. Erik had guessed right, then. “That was the plan,” he admitted. Solemn. 

“I should just fucking strangle you. Get back in the car. We’re driving down to Bol. Town with two doctors in a hospital. Last time I was passing through, there was a woman there who’d had to have her legs amputated. She was pregnant when Boko Haram threw a grenade into her hut. Let’s look for her, if she’s still alive. You should tell her all about your goddamned outreach centres.” 

T’Challa got back into the jeep. “What were you doing here?”

“Uncle Sam has special ops forces in most Sahelian states. Since I could speak a lot of the main languages, that’s where I went. Operated out of N’Djamena for a few months.” The jeep took a few attempts to start back up. They rolled on through the bones of the lake, long dead. 

“What was _your_ plan?” T’Challa asked. Erik glanced at him, but T’Challa was staring out over the sand, his hands folded in his lap. “If you are so concerned about Chad why did you try to take over other countries?” 

“‘Cos in this world the powerful make the weak dance to their tune. Rich countries got army bases in poor countries the world over. They got oil interests, resource interests. Shore up dictators when they wanna, take’m down when it suits. That’s the system right now and I wanna break it. Smash it all and build something new.” 

“Why Hong Kong?” 

“Why not?” 

T’Challa shook his head. “You’re talking about starting World War III. Can’t you see that? The horror and misery that those kinds of war cause for everyone… can’t you look back on history and learn from it?” 

“What I learned from history is that the winners get to write it. Sometimes even the losers do. Just look at what they teach about World War II in Japan. If you got power in this world, you can do what you want. You can _make_ history.”

“At the cost of what?” 

Erik slapped his palm down on the wheel, making T’Challa flinch. “Is there a better way? Let’s fucking hear it. How would you fix Chad? Without annexing it, replacing its government, and rebuilding it?”

“It’s a vast country. Even with our tech, we won’t have the manpower to run a police state. And we don’t have the tech to give them back their lake. Without the lake their current economy remains broken. Radicalisation feeds on desperation. We _can_ however quickly build infrastructure, provide education, feed them.” 

“And then what?”

“Then we trust them to rebuild their own country. In their own image.” 

Erik spat to the side. “Yeah, like that’ll work out.” 

“Listen to what you’ve just said. You know why the woman in Canaan knew you were American? This is why. Exceptionalism’s built into your culture. America, always America the beautiful. Greatest country in the world. You always have to be right.” 

“I’m Wakandan-American,” Erik corrected, narrowing his eyes. “That’s got to shit you.” 

“Not at all.” 

“Yeah? In the throne room that day, you couldn’t even say my name.” 

T’Challa sank an inch lower in his seat. “Because I was ashamed. You _are_ Wakandan. But my father abandoned you when you were a child. Even though we are blood.”

“You were afraid. ‘Cos you knew what was coming.”

“Perhaps so.” 

“I think deep down some part of you knows I’m right. That’s why you’re scared. You know your way of doing things is gonna be insultingly inadequate. Turn away from me all you want, dismiss me, but you’re just turning away from the truth.” 

T’Challa stared at him. Again with that frustrating unbroken calm. “I think you cling to your hatred and solutions born of hatred. Because you sense that if you let it go, you’d have to deal with your pain.” 

Erik grit his teeth so tightly that his jaw ached. He’d kill T’Challa in Chad. Leave the body out in the bones of the lake for the flies.

#

The early morning sun drew soft highlights over the flock of birds settling down over the lake. In the distance, thick log-like shapes moved against the current, ears flicking. Hippos. The fishermen already out on the lake steered well clear. It was nearly the wet season, and the air felt like it was thickening from the rains to come. Erik sat on the bumper of the jeep by the reed-filled waters and watched the birds.

T’Challa was off to the side, talking earnestly to a woman by her canoe. The doctor had been about to head out towards the remote islands. Her canoe was packed with vaccines in solar-powered refrigerators. Eventually the doctor and another woman climbed into the canoe, and they paddled off through the reeds. 

“Interesting?” Erik asked sardonically, as T’Challa walked over to the jeep. 

“Humbling. She said she was going to have to paddle five, six hours to get to where she needs to be. To give children a round of polio vaccines.” 

“She tell you how she’s gonna have to evade crocs, hippos, and insurgents to do it? Every day?” 

T’Challa sat on the bumper beside Erik, a hand’s breadth too close. Erik stiffened, but T’Challa didn’t seem to notice. “She remembers you.” 

“I saw that.” Erik had offered the doctor a polite greeting before retreating to let T’Challa talk to her. 

“She said you once told her that you’d someday make her Queen of Chad.” 

“Hey, she laughed when I said it.” 

“But you were serious.”

Erik nodded over at the reeds, where the doctor’s boat was already out of sight. “She can’t fight. Got no fancy herbs in her blood. But she does this kinda thing all year. When she ain’t, she’s here in Bol, working her heart out. I respect people like that. Maybe they should be in charge.” 

T’Challa’s mouth pressed into a thin, tired line. “My father once said it was hard for a good man to be a king.” 

“The Wakandan king, maybe. Anyway. She told me she was too busy to be Queen. How’s that for humbling.” 

“I don’t think it’s worked,” T’Challa said, with a faint smile. Erik started to laugh, then he caught himself and looked away, back at the hippos. T’Challa was disarming even when he wasn’t trying to be.

#

Erik was still studying the partial skull of Sahelanthropus in the Chad National Museum when T’Challa caught up with him. “Productive day?” Erik asked, without looking up. His hands were folded loosely behind his back, spectacles pushed up his nose.

T’Challa folded away surprise and something else that made him flick his gaze quickly over Erik’s face and down to the skull. Interesting. “I didn’t know you needed spectacles.”

“Fancy herbs didn’t fix my eyes, no. Degree ain’t that high, I just like to have it when I wanna see the details.” 

T’Challa opened his mouth, probably to say something about Wakandan optometry, then he coughed. “To answer your question, yes and no.”

“How’s that answering my question?” T’Challa had spent the last few days in quiet talks with the relief efforts stationed in N’Djamena and other interest groups. 

“It means yes, you’re right, the crises in the Sahelian region are extremely complex, and my original plans would have been inadequate.” 

“But…?”

T’Challa looked at the skull. “If things hadn’t worked out the way they had, I think you might have had a rather productive conversation with Nakia.”

“That’s the… River Tribe War Dog with the ringblades.” Erik vaguely remembered someone along those lines. “Looked like you two have history. Who is she, girlfriend?”

“A long time ago. She believes in direct intervention as well. Ran her War Dog missions that way. But she also believes in a comprehensive approach. Which means. Not open warfare.”

“You Wakandans are soft.” Erik paused. “Other than the Border Tribe. They were more my jam.”

“Yes, I suppose they would be. They’re the most militant tribe in Wakanda. Out of necessity.” 

“Those guys in the wooden armour were pretty militant too.” 

“The Jabari? Oh yes. Again out of necessity. In their opinion.” 

“Didn’t they retreat back into their mountains? What was that all about?” 

“They’re waiting to see who would be King,” T’Challa said quietly. He turned his head, reading the plaque on the display. “I hope you’re not considering another museum break-in.” 

“This? Nah. I’m feeling it. But it’s here where it needs to be. Found in the northern part of Chad. This bit of bone’s from one of our earliest ancestors.” The skull was small, similar to a chimpanzee’s.

“They’ve called it Toumaï. The hope of life.”

“Ironic if you ask me.” The creature whose skull sat in the glass case had been dead for seven million years. Its distant descendants were far removed from what it had been, and were killing the land that had given it life. 

“You’ve been here before.”

“Ain’t that much to do in N’Djamena during downtime.” 

“The curators remember you. You used to talk to them regularly. Ask a lot of questions. You’ve left quite an impression.”

“Chad left an impression on me,” Erik said. He scowled. Said too much. T’Challa glanced from him to the skull. 

“Somewhere along the line you moved from wanting revenge to wanting more,” T’Challa said softly. He looked around the sparse exhibition space. Many of the museum’s pieces had long been looted. “Was it here?” 

“I see you tryna’ square me away,” Erik shot back. “Angry kid joins the army, goes to war, never comes back from the war. Sees some skull in a museum and has a Zen revelation: all people are from the cradle of Africa so we should help them all out. Close to what you were thinking? Go on. You got more bullshit to add?”

“That’s not what I was doing. And I couldn’t assume, even if I wanted to. You were a brilliant student in MIT—”

“You gon’ tell me I could’ve done so much more with my life?” Erik sneered. “After my father died, you know how I survived? I was a phone boy. Crack epidemic swept where I lived, growing up. I used to wait outside a burger joint by a pay phone and shoot hoops. Someone rings, looking for drugs, for girls, whatever, I tell them where to find a dealer. I been robbed at gunpoint, had my ass kicked, you name it.” He looked back at the skull with a harsh laugh. “Funny world. I grew up on food stamps. Fast forward twenty years and I’m a King. For a few days. That pisses me off.” 

“You still _are_ a King. Since neither of us yielded, that hasn’t yet been resolved.” 

“Yeah? That’s why you went off to all them meetings by yourself?” 

T’Challa flinched. “Did you want to come?”

“Did you ask?” 

“I…” T’Challa swallowed. “I’m sorry for my assumptions. You’re welcome to come, you always have been. And I’ll value your input and your advice.” 

T’Challa’s apology only annoyed Erik further. He jammed his hands into his pockets. “How long more are we gonna be here?” 

“That’s up to you,” T’Challa said, still contrite. Erik forced down the impulse to break his nose. Fighting in a museum would only get messy. “Tomorrow I’m meant to be meeting the head of Oxfam’s Chad mission. If you’d like to come—”

“Lawrence Toures?”

“Yes?”

Erik snorted. “You should ask him about the prostitute parties he likes to run out of safehouses. Told you,” Erik said, as T’Challa blinked. “System’s all broken.”

“You learned that in the CIA?”

“Yeah. We got a handle on everyone’s dirty laundry. Don’t you? You got War Dogs everywhere.”

“Not to such an extent. And with a very specific mandate.”

“One that my father broke?”

The question startled T’Challa: he straightened up. “Intervention is tolerated. But treason is not.” 

“You like to talk about how Wakanda doesn’t have prisons, doesn’t have the death penalty. So why was my father afraid of going home? Scared enough to draw a gun? He would’ve known what would’ve happened.”

“I don’t know, Erik. Why _was_ he afraid?” T’Challa asked. The sympathy in his tone rankled. Erik swallowed bile, choked down his rage. He turned on his heel, stalking out of the room.

#

Erik had a soft spot for Nairobi. 44 tribes, at least three languages, good food: the city was freewheeling, colourful, brash. When he’d been embedded here he’d picked up sheng, the local slang, hung out in Kitengala Glass, and developed a taste for ugali. Erik had learned to make and eat ugali Nairobi-style, cooking maize flour until it became a dough, then rolling a lump into a ball, dip, profit.

They ate smokies wedged against a tiled wall in Kenyatta Market. Trolleys selling the street franks were packed near metal bellies belching grease and smoke into narrow corridors, roasting nyama choma over coals. T’Challa was watching the crowds. Packed precariously near a nyama choma store, on top of a stack of cardboard boxes, a radio was belting out maloko from a local station. 

“You talk like a local,” T’Challa said, barely audible over the music. 

“I was here for a year. Posted to the CIA station. They were running their Somali missions from Nairobi. I learned a lot.” 

“From the CIA?” 

“Nah man. From Nairobi. Living here taught me that a lot of the things I assumed about Africa were wrong. Taught me about myself, too. I grew up on what I thought were fairy tales. By the time I joined the Agency, I didn’t believe in all that anymore. Somedays I thought maybe my father had made up all his stories about Wakanda. Magic African country where he was the Prince and everybody was happy and the sunsets were the most beautiful in the world? Yeah right.” 

T’Challa grew sober. “You learned about Wakanda from the CIA?”

“Nah. I meant. This city taught me that maybe my father’s version of Wakanda was real. And also that even if it _wasn’t_ , that heritage’s still a part of me. Worth looking for. I didn’t learn about Wakanda from American intel. Don’t shit your pants.” 

“That’s not what I was thinking about.” T’Challa finished the last of his smokie. “I wish we could’ve met in better circumstances.”

“Even if T’Chaka had dragged me back to Wakanda with him, he killed my father. You think I’d have forgotten that? Even if I got to grow up in Wakanda?”

“No, of course not.”

“There’s no other way we could’a met but as enemies.” 

T’Challa let out a frustrated noise. “Why does that have to be what we are? Neither of us are our fathers. You do care about the world as it is. More than I do. I think that’s partly why your hate runs so deep. In some ways you’re more worthy of the panther’s claws than I am. Than anyone I’ve met.” 

“And yet?” Erik asked mockingly. 

“And yet,” T’Challa said. He scrubbed a palm over his face. “And yet here we are. Your hate has poisoned you for too long.” 

“Should’a figured that out before your daddy disemboweled mine with his claws and left me to find the body.”

T’Challa shuddered. Then he set his jaw. “You still made your choices. Not everyone who experiences loss lets it twist them into something destructive. Had you come back to Wakanda early we would have let you in.” 

“With your father still King? Yeah right.” 

“Why did you wait until _I_ was King?” 

“‘Cos I know how to pick my targets. Sure, I wish I’d been the one who killed T’Chaka. Was difficult deciding to let him die in his own time. But I knew if I wanted to start a takeover it’d have to be during a regime change. CIA playbook.” 

Something close to anger hardened T’Challa’s face. Then he let it slide. “I’ve a meeting at the UN Office in Nairobi later tonight. You’re welcome to attend.” 

“You in exile or you working? Thought your mom’s the Queen now.”

“I’m not making any state decisions. I’m just there to learn.” 

“Yeah. You do that.” 

T’Challa looked briefly annoyed. “Did you want to be included or do you not? You’re the one who called me out on this.” 

“Hey, I know how all this is gonna turn out. After a year, we’ll head back, and you’d weasel out of this ‘two kings’ shit. You’d be back on the throne and I’d be squeezed out. So what’s the point?” 

T’Challa shot him an incredulous look. “Don’t you want to learn more about the world you want to save?”

“If the UN worked the way it was meant to, we wouldn’t be in this shit.” CIA’s Nairobi station had always had a rather jaundiced opinion of the UN’s Nairobi mission. Finishing his own smokie, Erik started to head off. He’d find a quiet spot to have a cold beer. 

T’Challa grabbed a fistful of Erik’s shirt, hauling him over. His eyes were narrowed. This close, Erik could smell the smoke on T’Challa’s skin, the oil, the sweat. “If you want to be King,” T’Challa said evenly, “then I want you to act like one. Not just like a conqueror.”

Erik bared his teeth. He would’ve snapped a retort, but his eyes were drawn to the sheen on T’Challa’s plush lips, the scent of kachumbari salsa from the smokie. They were breathing each other in, and it was drowning out the noise. Distantly, Erik could hear himself making a sound that his throat shouldn’t have been able to make. A low and coughing groan, a big cat waiting to leap. 

T’Challa let him go so sharply that they both stumbled against the wall. His eyes were wide, and he was breathing in harsh gasps. Erik ducked his head and eased into the crowd before T’Challa could speak. As he walked, Erik raked his blunt nails over his skin, shivering. His fingertips, unbidden, were twitching into claws.

#

Achieng Apolo had been head of the CIA’s Nairobi station when Erik had been posted there, and now, even in her fifties, she still called the shots. She nodded at Erik as she sat beside him at the counter in the back alley bar. They ordered a cold Tusker each, and she smirked as Erik looked her over. Age hadn’t changed her. She wore unassuming clothes, no bag, no visible weapons, hair buzzed nearly all the way down to her scalp.

“Erik. You look good,” Achieng said. 

“You look better. Ma’am,” Erik said, and grinned as they clinked glasses. 

“Don’t you ‘ma’am’ me. You’re in big trouble, my boy.” 

“Yeah? What kinda trouble?” 

Achieng glowered at him. “I knew the day you dropped out of the Company and went merc was the day I should’a dragged you back to Nairobi and spanked you.” 

Erik laughed. “Didn’t know you were into that kinda thing.” 

“A certain Agent dropped a long file on you that got tagged to high heaven. Kicked up a real fuss back home. Turns out you’re a Prince?” 

“I’m a King, now. Been upgraded.” 

“Aw shit, don’t let your airs choke you on the way out,” Achieng said, though she smiled sharply. “So what did you want to talk about?” 

“Just checking in.”

“Oh, it’s like that now, eh? Looking for work?” 

“Might be.” 

“We don’t have a good budget for contractors. Not like Blackwater. You know that.” 

Erik shrugged. “Given what I did to the last man I worked for, things are quiet on that front right now.” 

Achieng studied him thoughtfully, sipping her beer. Her gun-roughened thumbs left streaks through the condensation. “I could use a mole. Heard good things about your new digs.” 

Erik raised his eyebrows. “Didn’t I tell you I was the King?”

“Yeah? That why you came to me, sniffing for work?” Achieng shot back. “Run your cards right and I could put a word up. Open a few doors.” 

Even in Wakanda? Possible. If anyone could do it, Achieng could. Once, years ago, Erik had very nearly confided everything with Achieng. He’d wanted her advice. She’d spent decades embedded in various stations in Africa, dealing with all number of crises. Causing them, too. She was part of the problem, and also the hand that had shaped much of his professional life. She smiled at him now, ruthless. Time hadn’t changed that either. 

“I’ll think about it,” Erik said. 

“You do you. I’ll be waiting. In the meantime, sure, I’ll keep an eye out. Pass on what I can get.” 

They drank and talked about local politics, up until the bar was pointedly trying to close. Out on the street, Achieng said, “Oh, by the way. What happened to that analyst you poached out of Khartoum’s station, what’s her name, Linda?” 

Achieng was smiling, but her smile was tight. Erik shrugged. “We broke up.” 

“Really? Well. That’s life. Heard that girl was crazy about you. To have resigned and uprooted her life just a week after meeting you? Gerber was pissed off, I can tell you that. Called me just to complain.” 

Gerber was Khartoum’s station chief at the time. “Gerber’s an ass.” 

“Pity about her,” Achieng said pointedly. “See you around, Erik.” 

Back in the hotel, T’Challa startled awake as Erik shook his shoulder. “Get up.”

“What? What time is it?” T’Challa sat up, rubbing his eyes. “What happened?” 

“Later. Get up. Move your ass.” 

On the road out of Nairobi, T’Challa fought yawns in the car, rumpled and still confused. “What happened? You were out for a while.” 

“Just had a bad feeling,” Erik said. T’Challa stared at him, puzzled, but clearly decided not to pry, curling up against the seat. He was asleep again quickly. Erik glared at him. It would’ve been easy to grab the pistol from the glove compartment and shoot him. Here, now, and in the dark. Again, Erik held back. His killing instinct where T’Challa was concerned was eroding. It’d been that way for weeks. 

T’Challa purred in his sleep, a low, throaty rumble. Another nonhuman sound. Erik felt an answering purr bubble up in his chest, fighting his throat. He forced it down with a gasp, digging his nails into the wheel of the car. 

Yeah. They were both in trouble.

#

“I probably pissed off the CIA,” Erik said, when they were in Dar Es Salaam. They sat on the sand in Coco Beach against a tall coconut tree, some distance from the tourist swarm.

“When you tried to kill Agent Ross?” 

“Well no. When I killed Linda.”

“Your… girlfriend.” 

Erik nodded. “I met her when I’d decided to go private. After I’d decided what I was going to do. I was in Khartoum, following a lead on Klaue. She turned out to be the information broker. Obviously CIA. We hit it off, I poached her. Her boss, Gerber, never forgave me.” 

“So they know that you killed her.” 

“If they don’t, they’re going soft.” He’d been hoping they were.

“And they care?” 

“Well,” Erik said dryly, “she was Gerber’s niece.” 

“But you still don’t regret it.” 

“Nah.” Erik stretched out his legs. The Indian Ocean stretched out beyond them, past a smattering of boats, seamed against the horizon. 

“Why?” 

“What do you mean, why?” 

“I’m genuinely curious. I can’t understand why you would shoot people who loved you and feel no remorse.” 

“Pigeonhole me again. ‘Sociopath’, that’s the word for it, yeah?” 

“If you were a sociopath then why would you care about fixing the world? But how can you say you care about black people when you step on their bodies to get where you want to be?”

Erik smirked. “How can you wax lyrical about caring about people? You sat behind chameleon tech all your life and did nothing for them as they starved. That’s people for you,” he said, as T’Challa stiffened. “We’re all fucked up. Just so happens that some of us are more honest about it.” 

This shut T’Challa up for a while. They sat in quiet as the sun began to wind down, the beach lighting up. There was a nightclub on Coco Beach, further down. Things sometimes got noisy. When Erik had last been here, winding down after a mission, he’d gotten drunk on whisky and nearly drowned in the sea. Achieng had chewed him out when she’d heard. Fun times. 

“What did you see in the Ancestral Plane?” T’Challa asked. 

The question startled Erik. He’d been starting to doze off against the tree. “My dad. Not my mom, though. That was weird.” Not that Erik would’ve known her face if he had seen her. 

“Just your father?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Where?” 

Erik frowned at T’Challa. “Why?” 

“I’m just curious. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to share.” 

Put that way… Erik scowled. “I was in my apartment. Back in Oakland. Hell, I hadn’t been there since my dad died. Social services came for me. After that it was just one foster home after another.” 

“I see.” T’Challa looked uncomfortable. 

“Why? What d’you see?”

“A great plain. The panthers who lived before me as Kings and Queens.”

“Why, did you think I’d see the same thing? I wasn’t born in Wakanda. My mother descended from slaves.” 

“True.” T’Challa stared at his feet.

“I’ve been thinking about what you asked before. Why my father never returned to Wakanda. Why he didn’t bring me back to raise me there. I asked him before. He used to tell me he didn’t think Wakanda would accept me. A half-blood.” 

“He was wrong,” T’Challa said. His eyes were fierce. 

“Maybe. Maybe he wasn’t. Y’all treat me like an outsider. Not just you. The woman in Canaan. The doctor in Chad, the people I got to know in Nairobi. Doesn’t matter whether I can talk the talk, walk the walk. To an African person I’m American. To an American I’m always gonna be African.” Erik let out a panther sound, a harsh coughing bark. This time, he wasn’t afraid. He let its feral temper shake out under his skin. 

T’Challa shook his head. “You belong in Wakanda. Even now. It doesn’t matter what our fathers would’ve thought. It’s the truth.” 

“I don’t belong anywhere. I think that’s the point. Used to eat me up inside but now I’m cool with it.” 

“Even so, your father—”

“I think, deep down, my father didn’t wanna go back because it meant I’d have to go back. I think he knew his own brother, knew that T’Chaka wouldn’t take me in if there was no one to speak for me. I think my father decided he’d rather die than have me grow up in Wakanda.” 

T’Challa stiffened. “But…” He trailed off. 

“And sure, that’s fucked up. But I understand. I think I needed to grow up in America. If I’d grown up in Wakanda I wouldn’t have lived the way I did. Maybe I wouldn’t have come to want to change everything. Would’ve lived oblivious in a golden city with nice sunsets.”

“I see,” T’Challa said. He sounded troubled. They had dinner in silence.

#

The herb’s side-effects were getting worse. Weirder, too. In Dodoma Erik woke up in T’Challa’s bed, curled against him, the both of them purring in a low, semi-conscious rumble. If Erik got too close he’d have to fight the urge to rub his cheeks against T’Challa’s shoulders, press himself against T’Challa’s back. If the herb wasn’t clearly also affecting T’Challa the same way, Erik would’ve been suspicious.

“What the fuck is happening?” Erik demanded, as they drove out of the city after breakfast.

At least T’Challa didn’t try to deny it. “I don’t know. I’ve never had the herb affect me this way.” 

“Never been around someone else who’d also eaten the herb?”

“I have. My father.” 

“The Goddess works in strange ways?” Erik asked, sardonic. 

T’Challa nodded, completely serious. “It appears so.” 

“You seriously believe that? That there’s a cat goddess that gave special plants to Wakanda?” 

T’Challa looked at him. “I don’t mock your beliefs.” 

“Well, if it’s true, I guess that figures. Cats are assholes.” 

There was a cough from T’Challa’s side of the car, as though he was stifling a laugh. “That’s a disrespectful thing to say.”

“But true.”

“No comment,” T’Challa said, though he smiled.

#

In Tabora they woke up on the floor of their room, quilts tugged down into a nest between the beds, T’Challa’s cheek pressed over his chest, legs tangled. His cock was stiff against Erik’s thigh, and when Erik prodded T’Challa awake, he yelped and tried to scramble free.

Erik held him down. The morning sun was edging past the curtains. Outside, the town was waking up. “Erik,” T’Challa said quietly. Uncertain. He blinked as Erik rolled them over, pinning T’Challa to the nest. 

“Guess the number of times I’ve thought about killing you since we left Wakanda,” Erik said. He bent to breathe in T’Challa’s scent at his throat as T’Challa tensed up. The panther-spirit was right under his skin, so close; if they cut him open now, maybe all they’d see would be fur and claws. 

“Probably the same as the number of times I’ve thought about walking away,” T’Challa said. His words were starting to slur, as though spoken against larger teeth. Erik growled. He felt T’Challa rumble beneath him in turn. 

“Come on then, _cousin _,” Erik said, challenging, and T’Challa bared his teeth, twisting them around.__

__T’Challa kissed Erik hard on the mouth, muffling their snarls. Erik clawed his hands down T’Challa’s back as T’Challa dug his fingertips into Erik’s shoulders. Erik missed their claws. He surged against T’Challa, biting him, and T’Challa jerked up, shooting him an annoyed glance before leaning back down. Taking control. It should’ve pissed Erik off but somehow it didn’t. He let T’Challa lead, let him slow things down. A hand curled tight around the back of his neck, grounding him. Erik was purring, or maybe T’Challa was. They licked into each other’s mouths, against their teeth and throats. Erik was harder than he’d ever been. They rubbed against each other like schoolboys. Lust was being sanded out between them, snared in place._ _

__“Come on then,” T’Challa whispered, with a tenderness Erik should’ve hated. He bucked against T’Challa instead, muffling his snarl against his wrist._ _

__“This doesn’t mean I like you,” Erik said, as they got cleaned up. “I don’t even know what the fuck this is.”_ _

__T’Challa inclined his head. At least he looked just as unsettled as Erik felt._ _

____

#

They crossed up into Rwanda, because Erik hadn’t been there before. No other reason. Erik wasn’t even sure now where he was going. He’d intended to show T’Challa Chad, Sudan, and South Sudan. Then he’d wanted to pop over to Nairobi to talk to Achieng. Now he just felt rootless. It was a strange feeling, if not an unfamiliar one. He’d drifted for a long time before, in and out of foster homes.

In Nyamirambo they ordered whole roasted tilapia and a round of Mutzig beers at a restaurant with loud lavender tables and white plastic chairs. “Kigali gives me hope,” T’Challa said, as they washed their hands in a bowl of warm water and soap.

Erik squeezed lime on the fish. It broke apart easily under their hands, fragrant and topped with tomatoes and onion. “That places like Chad can recover?”

T’Challa nodded. “The Rwandan genocide wasn’t that long ago. Little more than twenty years. You wouldn’t realize that looking at Kigali.” 

“Big comfort to the million people murdered by their neighbours. Or the couple of million people who became refugees after the war, where a few thousand of them died to diseases. Things sparked off the First Congo War. And the second one. And now we have an ongoing shitstorm in that bit of the world.” Erik toasted T’Challa with his beer. “People suck.”

T’Challa exhaled. “Wars always have repercussions. You obviously know this. I wish you understood it.”

“Nah man. I see your point. Kigali looks good. Safe, clean city. And there are countries out there that went from third world to first even after wars and unrest. Can be done. Just that your way of getting to this point and mine ain’t the same.”

“And you truly think empire can help you get to this point for all of Africa without adding to the world’s already massive refugee crisis?” 

“Hasn’t been tried before.” 

“I’d beg to differ.” 

“Hasn’t been tried by _me_ before.” 

T’Challa scowled. “You have a healthy ego.” 

They used Kigali as a base for a week. Neither of them had been on a safari tour before. Looking at animals was like consciously shifting gear. It felt like they were running on neutral for days, pushed towards a ceasefire. Most mornings, Erik woke up curled against T’Challa’s belly. Even that was starting to get less weird. He was settling into the cat under his skin, or maybe the cat was settling into him. Maybe it’d been there all along, waiting. Its bloodlust tasted familiar.

#

Cairo was sometimes known as Um al-Dunya, the Mother of the World. Erik had spent half a year assigned to ops out of its CIA station. The city on its best days felt like a manifestation of sheer chaos. 22 million people packed together meant a collective roar, a constant exhale of car horns and calls to prayer and chatter.

From Cairo they drove a couple of hours up to Alexandria. An ancient temple to Bast had been found. Word had filtered down to T’Challa somehow when they’d been in Harare, and they’d caught a flight up. Erik wasn’t sure what he was meant to expect. Descending into the fresh dig felt like he was entering a tomb. Passing through rock, backwards in time. 

“Have you been to Bubastis?” Erik asked. His voice echoed off the claustrophobic press of rock around them. 

T’Challa glanced up from where he was inspecting one of the hundreds of cat statues that were being unearthed in the dig. “No. You?”

“Nah.” Cat statues. Huh. “Why are we here?” 

“Wakanda has always had a long-standing interest in certain kinds of cultural finds.”

“Y’all gonna add to your cat statue collection?” 

T’Challa ignored him. “It’s interesting to me how we came to worship Bast in her incarnation as a panther, when geographically Wakanda is on the other side of the continent.”

“And y’all still pray to a cat even though everyone’s moved on to other shit. Maybe that’s why Wakanda did so well. Y’all kept on worshipping cats while everyone else got around to worshipping people,” Erik said facetiously. 

“That’s a thought that the Shamanate might happily get behind.” T’Challa walked deeper into the dig, his hands folded behind his back. 

“After they’re done being mad at me for burning shit down.” 

T’Challa glanced over his shoulder at Erik with a wry smile. “You may have burned the herb beds but we _do_ have something called seed banks. Stored elsewhere.”

Right. “Should’ve figured.” Them shamans _had_ caved pretty damned easily. 

The underground temple hadn’t been that big. Or maybe the rest of it had long collapsed. There were a disturbing number of cat statues, many of them still intact after all this time. He felt restless underground. Too much rock over his head. Erik went deeper into the dig anyway, past the little cat coffins. There wasn’t that much to see and he was getting disappointed. No sudden religious revelations. No magic panthers. 

Erik emerged out of the dig to find T’Challa talking to someone familiar. It took him a moment to place the name. Nakia, that was it. She was a beautiful woman, her hair worn short, dressed in a blouse and jeans, visibly unarmed. Nakia shot Erik a wary stare as he waved at her, and he could feel her stare prickling at his back as he walked away from the dig.

T’Challa found him several blocks away, having a cup of coffee at a sidewalk qahwa. Erik ignored him until T’Challa ordered his own coffee and sat down, fingertips curled over the glass cup. “Shouldn’t you be catching up with your ex?” Erik asked.

“She shouldn’t be here.” 

“Maybe she thought I would’ve killed you by now.”

“She did express that opinion, yes.” 

“Considering she saved your ass and probably your throne, why aren’t you guys married?” Erik smirked.

T’Challa grimaced. “It hasn’t been like that between us for a while.” 

“Sounds like she’s the one who got away.” 

T’Challa drank his coffee instead of replying. Somehow, that was in itself annoying. A reminder that beyond the dusty weeks they’d spent together, there were decades’ worth of T’Challa’s life that Erik didn’t know. They were strangers that had tried their damnedest to kill each other. That was their single confluence point. Their shared blood felt like a distant detail, near irrelevant. 

That night T’Challa hauled Erik over for a kiss before they turned in for bed, hard and bruising. Erik bruised him right back, shoving him down on the sheets, snarling as T’Challa flipped them over. The panther was clawing under his skin, but it wasn’t angry. It didn’t want blood. Erik licked a long stripe up T’Challa’s throat and growled as T’Challa nipped his ear. They were both making low, huffing noises, breathing deep. As Erik caught sight of T’Challa’s eyes he’d almost expected to see the golden orbs of a cat. 

The panther under T’Challa’s skin was older. Not stronger, in Erik’s opinion, but as Erik tried to squirm up T’Challa bit down on his throat and held him down. Waiting. Somehow Erik calmed down with a strangled noise instead of tearing free. T’Challa licked after his pulse, purring encouragingly. They kissed as they stripped down, impatient with their clothes. This was probably wrong. There was a wrongness to the air, to Erik’s human instincts. The panther part of him didn’t care. He rubbed his thumbs over T’Challa’s bared hips, squeezed the tight flesh of his ass. 

T’Challa grabbed Erik’s wrists, pinning them down to the bed beside his head with a warning stare. He growled, deep and liquid, when Erik bared his teeth in turn. Pointedly, Erik kept his hands on the headboard instead, a compromise. Got a kiss for it, a half-apology. The lust he felt wasn’t scouring away any of the ugly things he felt about T’Challa. It burned them deeper. He hissed as T’Challa nuzzled his arm, licked past the scars on Erik’s chest to a nipple. Death-marks. T’Challa paid them no notice, when all of Erik’s previous lovers had worshipped them. T’Challa mouthed at the skin in between instead, pressed his tongue into shallow valleys. Trying to reach the Erik that was. 

Irritated, Erik nudged his knees up against T’Challa’s flanks. T’Challa shifted to pin his legs down, shooting up another warning glance, making a coughing growl. Erik subsided only because the panther wanted to. He let T’Challa work down to his cock, slow and methodical, then groaned as T’Challa kissed the soft skin under his thighs, nipping up twitching muscle. Erik cursed at T’Challa but T’Challa ignored him. He was mapping Erik, each twitch and jerk, each breath. Slow, slow. Erik was beginning to feel dazed by the time T’Challa finally licked his cock. The warm, wet touch made him flinch. Snarl. T’Challa licked from root to tip and back, breathing out. He purred with Erik’s thighs pressed against him.

This wasn’t so bad. T’Challa chuckled—Erik had said that out loud—and swallowed him down before Erik could snap something back. Erik arched with a loud yelp. T’Challa pinned him down to the bed and took in another inch. Bit by bit until he was kissing the root, fuck, then back up again, bit by bit until his tongue was curling over the tip. “C’mon,” Erik said harshly, slurred against fangs he did not have. “Fucking _c’mon_.” T’Challa buried a smirk against him instead, slowing down even further. Asshole. Erik’s toes curled against the bed, bucking uselessly against T’Challa’s grip. 

He hated this. He loved it. Tangled against the panther Erik could only make gasping, keening noises and great bestial coughs. Words had been torn from him, lost to change, Erik flexed his nails against the headboard, scouring shallow grooves. Against him T’Challa hummed, satisfied. Up and down. The rhythm felt inexorable, a driving push against time. Yoked to it, Erik didn’t even flinch when slicked fingers eventually pushed against his hole, pressing carefully past muscle. The stretch was uncomfortable at first. Something Erik wasn’t used to. It felt so inexorable that he didn’t even think twice. T’Challa was knuckle deep, two fingers, and Erik was hissing as he ground down against it, chasing the odd, satisfying fullness. 

Wasn’t enough yet. “T’Challa,” Erik complained harshly. “ _C’mon_.” 

T’Challa pulled off. Erik made an annoyed noise that was swallowed up as T’Challa kissed him, taking his mouth. Erik slung a leg around T’Challa’s waist, pushing up against T’Challa’s grip. T’Challa caught one of Erik’s wrists, tugging his hand down. Just about slick enough for the both of them. They caught their hands around their flesh, thrusting into their fingers as T’Challa fucked Erik with his fingers. Probing. He brushed something that made Erik yelp and jerk against their grip. The panther surged up. Sank their teeth into T’Challa’s throat, hard enough to taste copper. T’Challa snarled. His teeth grazed Erik’s jaw, fingers crooking deep. Erik locked up as he came, his eyes squeezed shut. 

Erik licked the blood off his mouth as T’Challa got them cleaned up. They lay together on the other bed in a lazy sprawl, tangled up. “Something ain’t right,” Erik said, as T’Challa’s breathing slowed. 

“Mm.” 

“Like we’re being possessed.” 

T’Challa glanced up. “Do you think so?” 

Erik raised his palm, the outline dimmed against the city lights from the window. He flexed his fingertips into claws. For the first time in a long while, he felt completely comfortable in his skin, scars and history and all. T’Challa rubbed his cheek over Erik’s shoulders instead of waiting for an answer, dropping off quickly to sleep.

#

Erik hadn’t been back to Oakland since he’d left. The basketball court had been cleaned up. There was a real hoop now instead of a milk crate, but the streets looked the same. Kids were still messing around on the court with an old ball. Some things changed slowly.

The apartment where his father had died sat silent. It’d been condemned for years, judging from the signs. “I hated living here,” Erik told T’Challa, as he looked through the fence at the concrete block. “Most times the lifts didn’t work. You’d get the occasional hobo who’d pee in the stairwell. Guns and crack everywhere.” 

“Things will change,” T’Challa said. 

“You can buy up and pretty up all the property you like, you can’t fix history. Can’t stop people from being shot for being black.” 

“That will change too.”

“I’ve been to the Promised Land,” Erik said, with a sharp curl to his mouth. “Still don’t see what’s wrong with trying to bring it to the rest of the world.” 

“And we will. We are. First we’ll try it my way.” 

“And then? If that doesn’t work?”

T’Challa looked at him. In T’Challa’s dark and solemn eyes Erik saw the panther, reflected. Identical. Or one of many of the same, each a fragment of something greater. “Then we’ll try something else,” T’Challa promised, “and I want you to be there.” 

Erik looked up at the sky, shading his eyes, where he’d once seen a bright outline against the clouds, fleeing. Now the sky sat empty. He’d seen it in a hundred shades of pink and purple, squared away behind a dream in concrete. Maybe someday he’d see it the way T’Challa did, arched across a dream of the cradle of the world. He could be patient. “Until then.”

**Author's Note:**

> twitter: @manic_intent  
> tumblr: manic-intent.tumblr.com
> 
> Refs:  
> I thought about writing a fic like this after I watched Ai Weiwei’s incredible documentary, Human Flow: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVZGyTdk_BY
> 
> https://www.theplayerstribune.com/en-us/articles/steve-francis-i-got-a-story-to-tell
> 
> The countries that border Wakanda (Canaan, Niganda etc) are all fictional. Looks like they’re from the Coates run on the comics, but I’m not entirely sure from the wiki. In any case, Canaan and Niganda have both tried to attack Wakanda before. There was an actual Canaanite region in reality, but it’s not in West Africa where Wakanda is supposed to be (though Wakanda’s location seems to change depending on the writer sometimes), so some history buffs might get pissed reading bits of this story, but it wasn’t me, it Marvel. 
> 
> https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/12/04/lake-chad-the-worlds-most-complex-humanitarian-disaster?src=longreads  
> http://www.sun-connect-news.org/articles/off-grid-living/details/from-island-to-island-with-solar-cooled-vaccines-in-lake-chad/  
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/02/13/oxfam-prostitution-scandal-widens-to-at-least-three-countries/?utm_term=.f68d2dfcd33a
> 
> http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-21226068
> 
> "I imagine one of the reasons people cling to their hates so stubbornly is because they sense, once hate is gone, they will be forced to deal with pain." -James Baldwin
> 
> http://roadsandkingdoms.com/2017/know-before-you-go-nairobi/
> 
> https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/01/12/travel/what-to-do-36-hours-in-kigali-rwanda.html


End file.
